Hollowed be Thy Name
by DasCheesenborgir
Summary: "Mark my words, please believe my soul lives on; please don't worry now that I have gone, I've gone beyond to see the truth."
1. Hollowed be Thy Name

**Literally just threw this crap together in… about 20 minutes. You see what I did thar with the title? :)**

**Some of the themes I tried to throw in between the blatant song lyrics were drawn a little from theseeker64. No explicit copy-paste as far as I'm aware, but I figured I might as well cite the goofy bundle of booze and cheese since… well, I probably wouldn't be writing anything if it weren't for him. **

**0-0-0**

Rusted metal scraped on metal, as he clenched his armored fingers tight. Dented and battered gold, reduced to a dim bronze, fading, hollowing, like the whole damned world.

Here he sat, waiting, rotting, in a cold cell, when the bell began to chime.

A pair of empty pupils, blank white humour encased in decaying lenses, peered out from the needle thin slits in his helm, as much of a cage as the iron bars that held him.

One last look. One, final glimpse at the fading rays of sunshine, at the embers life running low-

A piercing chortle slithered into the moldy cell from above, reverberating in the rounded confines of his helmet, echoing, replaying, cackling…

_'It is only human to commit a sin.' _

The priest, reading him his last rites.

He didn't bother to get up, didn't bother to even pick up the pair of warped and grimy blades that laid against the wall. What was the point?

After all, he wasn't afraid of dying, there never was an end.

The steady rhythm of heavy steel on stone blared on, a resounding _clank, clank, _mechanical in its precision, uncompromising.

Seconds seemed to drag into hours, the flow of time trudging along in a distorted, slothlike stillness, all while the executioner's tune continued to blare in his ears.

Cold metal arms laid wrapped around his chest as they always were, no longer emanating a comforting warmth.

His Goddess, always to be with him.

If there was a Goddess, then why had she let him die?

_Clank, clank. _The clanging drums of death grew louder with each passing beat in his black heart.

A shadow fell over him. The last rays of a dying light he had been clinging to, snuffed out, a soft jingle of brittle keys left hanging in the empty air.

The end was near, but he cared not.

The end was always near, creeping up the twisted and shattered remnants of his spine, time breaking like water around him as it rushed by, his soul living on even as he shed his mortal shell of rotting flesh and thinned metal-

The door creaked open, hinges screeching in anticipation for the shedding of ashen blood and hollowed gore.

_Clank. Clank. _

A final, mocking pair of strikes upon the cracked earth before the grand finale, the crescendo of cold iron crashing down upon him.

His to-be executioner, just another faceless puppet of fate, blinded by hollow perceptions of justice.

_"Lautrec," _he rasped through the corroding visor of his helm.

That was his name. Hollowed as the sack of bones that it was attached to.

He laughed. It was a wispy, thin thing, as stringy as the frayed vocal chords it rang out of.

Hollowed be his name. Just like all the dead idols of the land, all of them fading to the same dust and ash, their souls flying away, out of their withering reach.

The scratchy tune of his laughter kept the music flowing as the righteous crusader sneered beneath his helm, rearing back with the bloodstained slab of iron gripped between his hands.

High and mighty now, but in the end? His name mattered just as much as his own.

Meaningless. Lifeless.

Hollowed.


	2. For Whom the Bell Tolls

**Oh look, it's Metallica this time around. **

**Only took maybe 15 minutes.**

**0-0-0**

A blackened roar, the chime of corroded metal, the bass scream of death, rolled across the sludge of Blighttown in a merciless wave.

Reverberating, rousing, the very grimy pillars that held the crumbling sky above them seemed to quake at the sound.

The gnarly yellow reeds swayed in the quivering mire, the tattered flesh of freshly fallen corpses convulsing under the slothlike waves of rolling swampwater.

Writhing creatures dove deeper into the darkness, seeking shelter from the echoes of iron in the beds of earth.

Wooden boards creaked and moaned, their broken skeletons buckling.

The bell tolled, again and again, hollow clangs of metal, echoing out from the lonely island that sat at the edge of the encroaching darkness.

Twisted, fibrous silk, sitting ever vigilant across from her.

The hill that men had killed for, without knowing why. That hill where many had fallen right before it, the ravenous mires swallowing broken bones and tattered flesh gone insane from the endless pain.

Hollow men, guided by hollow echoes of prophecy.

The rippling waves of sound blew past her, the shredded and grimy black remains of her cloak billowing in the raw blast of bass.

Sister Quelaag was dead.

Each toll carried on it, searing hot wails, screeches of a creature long lost, its last exclaims of anguish soaring out on the deep crashes of iron.

Cold, soot blackened iron, shearing through flame forged flesh.

Paper white lips, already drained and sapped ages ago, remained pursed as they always did. Not a single, dried fibre of muscle moved beneath that cloak of black, old bones set in stone long ago in the fate that she had resigned herself to.

No tears of sorrow slipped out from the empty ducts that sat by her glossy eyes, no twinge of relief pierced the stony skin of her still heart, stiffened wounds remaining frozen over.

The bell tolled on, its lamenting cries rising up from the dank pits to the world above.

Tolled, and tolled on, every hollow chime carrying with it a scrap of scorched air, a chime for those lost in fire.

A chime for the weeping souls that crawled along futilely, bearing the fruits of burden upon their broken backs.

A chime for her, a muddy island of her own.

The clank of cold metal continued on.

Alien, heavy boots tread along the conquered ground, plates of iron, blackened in ash.

He didn't see her, stoic steel smothering the black rags that wrapped the pale flesh of her body.

He didn't hear her, the echoing tolls of hollow prophecy blotting out the raspy breaths of an old witch.

On he marched, through the quivering swamp, up the shattered boards, cold steel shielding him from the earthly death that he had sewn around him, listening to the silence so loud.

One last chime for him, for whom the bell tolled.

Time marched on, as the clank of iron marched out with it.


End file.
